A Time of Omens

by Katharine Kerr

  The boy dropped the bucket and followed orders, racing to Rhodry’s open arms just as the shape took form and stepped off the water to the shore. She looked so like Oldana—and her hair was the other’s proper color now, too, a pale gold—that Rhodry swore under his breath. Val twisted in his arms.

  “Malamala!” he cried out. “Let me go! It’s my mother.”

  Rhodry held him tighter and swore again as the boy burst into tears. Shouting and cursing, Jennantar and half the alar came running to surround them. The apparition shook one fist in Rhodry’s direction, then vanished like smoke blowing away under a wind.

  “She’s gone,” Val sobbed. “Why didn’t you let me go? Why?”

  “Because she would have taken you with her to the Otherlands, and it’s not your time to go.” Rhodry said the only thing he could think of, looked round, saw Enabrilia shoving her way through the crowd. “Here’s your gramma. Go with her. I’ll come talk to you later, little one, but I don’t know if I can ever explain.”

  “I wanted to go with Malamala. I hate you! I want my mother.”

  When Rhodry handed the weeping child over to Enabrilia, the other women formed round her like a guard and swept them away. Rhodry looked round to find Daralanteriel and the other men standing between him and the lake.

  “I’m sorry,” Dar stammered out. “Jennantar, I never should have doubted your word, and I’m sorry. I—”

  “Don’t think of it again.” Jennantar laid a gentle hand on the prince’s shoulder. “It’s all unbelievable enough, isn’t it? Rhodry, for the love of every god, what was that—that creature?”

  “I don’t truly know.” Rhodry ran both hands through his hair and felt himself shake like a man with a fever. “But she bodes ill, whatever she is. Let’s go find the banadar.”

  Rhodry could be a stubborn man when he wanted, and indeed at times when he didn’t, as well. That she would stoop so low to gain her prize made him suddenly determined that she should never have that ring, no matter what the cost to him. Risking the rest of the alar, of course, was different. When they found Calonderiel, Rhodry told him the story, then led him away from the others out to the edge of the forest, where the corridors of trees stood nodding in the rising wind.

  “That Guardian I saw spoke true. I’ve got to leave, for the alar’s sake more than my own. I’m minded to ride north and look for Aderyn. No doubt she’ll follow me and the ring and leave the rest of you in peace.”

  “It seems best, doesn’t it? But you can’t go alone. Too dangerous. I’ll come with you, and we’ll take part of the warband, too.”

  “You have my thanks, and from the bottom of my heart.” Rhodry caught himself—he was speaking Deverrian again. After so many years of rarely hearing it, he was surprised that he would so instinctively return to it when he was troubled. He made himself speak Elvish. “I wasn’t looking forward to being out there alone, but I’ve got to talk to Aderyn. I don’t know whether to placate her or fight her.”

  “If she’s one of the Guardians, normally I’d say you should do what she wants, but I’m beginning to wonder.” Calonderiel thought for a moment, frowning out at the horizon. “I’ve never heard of a Guardian begging and wheedling a mere mortal like this. Maybe she’s some kind of evil spirit. You’re right. Aderyn’s the one who would know.”

  “I wonder where the old man is?”

  “North, probably, coming down to the winter camps. If he’d been south already, he would have come to the alardan.”

  Calonderiel turned the leadership of his alar over to the king and his son, just until he should return. With some ten men and a couple of packhorses, Rhodry and Calonderiel rode straight north, making a good twelve miles before pitching the night’s camp. Since under the starry sky everyone could see well enough, they dispensed with a fire, merely sat close together in a ring, watching the moon rise. No one seemed to have a thing to say. Twice someone started a song; both times the music died away after a few quiet verses.

  “Ye gods!” Calonderiel snarled at last. “What’s wrong with us all?”

  “Well, it’s a hard thing,” Jennantar said. “Losing first Oldana and now Rhodry.”

  “Here!” Rhodry snapped. “I’m not dead yet, curse you and your balls both, but you might be if you keep talking that way.”

  Everyone managed a weak laugh.

  “Not talking about you being dead,” Jennantar said. “Talking about you riding east.”

  “Do you think I want to leave the Westlands? Not without a fight, my friends.”

  At that exact moment they heard the howl, as if she’d waited to pick the perfect time to appear, the long wail of a banshee, echoing through the moonlight. Without thinking Rhodry was on his feet, facing her as she stood just beyond the circle of elves. Although she no longer wore Oldana’s face, she was still dressed all in white, like the burning clothes, and her long hair, hanging free, was silver-white as well.

  “My daughter.” This time she spoke in Elvish. “You don’t understand. They’ll take her far away from me. I must have that ring.”

  “How will my having the ring lose you your daughter?”

  “I don’t know. Evandar won’t tell me, but that ring was omened for you, Rhodry Maelwaedd, long, long ago before you were born again onto this earth of yours. Don’t you remember? You gave it to him, long years ago, when you wore another face and carried another name.”

  Rhodry could only stare, gape-mouthed. He heard Calonderiel get to his feet and come to stand beside him.

  “Listen, woman,” the banadar said. “If that ring was omened for Rhodry, then it’s no doing of yours. I’m truly sorry to hear your grief, but none of us know one wretched thing about this daughter of yours. And what’s this nonsense about other faces and names? I’m beginning to think you’ve gotten Rhodry confused with some other man.”

  She shrieked once, then disappeared. Rhodry felt sweat run down his back in a cold trickle.

  Although they kept a watch that night, and rode on guard from then on as well, they never saw the strange being again. After some days of searching, they found a fresh trail—horses and travois—that eventually led them to another alar, camped in the bend of a stream. As they rode up, a pair of young men came out to hail them and welcome them into the camp. Everyone dismounted and began leading their horses toward the distant circle of tents.

  “A question for you,” Calonderiel said to the pair. “Does Aderyn of the Silver Wings ride with this alar?”

  The two men winced, looking back and forth between them.

  “I take it you haven’t heard the news.”

  “News?” Rhodry turned cold, guessing it just from the grim looks on their faces.

  “And foul news at that. Aderyn died some twenty days ago. He was on his way to a big alardan down south somewhere, but he never reached it.”

  Rhodry grunted like a man kicked in the stomach. Staring at the ground but unseeing, he dropped his horse’s reins and walked a few steps away while the others went on talking to the banadar. He heard himself speak, realized that he was shaking his head in an instinctive denial while he muttered no, no, no, over and over. Oldana’s death was very sad, but to have Aderyn gone shook his entire world. The old man had always been there, wise and strong and full of good counsel, ever since those days long ago when Rhodry as a lad of twenty rode to war as cadvridoc for the first time, back in the old days, when he was heir to Aberwyn. Calonderiel caught up with him and grabbed his arm.

  “How?” Rhodry said. “Did they say?”

  “In his sleep. As peaceful as you’d want, or so they heard. Well, he’d lived a full life, after all, not like poor little Oldana, and no doubt he’s gone to join those Great Ones that dweomerfolk speak of.”

  “True spoken.” Without thinking, Rhodry slipped into Deverrian. “But it aches my heart all the same. Will his apprentice succeed him?”

  “He will, but he’s up north somewhere. Shall we ride after him? The gods only know when We’d catch up with him, and
I think you’re in too much danger for us to wander aimlessly about, my friend.”

  “So do I. I think me that I’ve been given an omen as well as sad news.”

  “You’re going to leave us?”

  Rhodry hesitated, staring off at the horizon and the endless sea of green, rippling in a rising wind. For years his entire life had been bounded by grass and grazing, the herds and the seasons of the year, the vast freedom of following the herds and the grass. To go back to the lands of men, to cities and to farms—what would he do there?

  “Staying here would put you all in danger,” he said aloud. “Evandar—I suppose that’s the Guardian who spoke to me that night—Evandar seemed to think that leaving was my only choice. And without Aderyn…” He let his voice trail away. “Well, I sold my sword once before. I can do it again.”

  “Ye gods! Not that!”

  “What choice do I have?”

  “I don’t know. But let’s shelter here tonight anyway. Don’t go rushing into some decision you’ll regret.”

  “Good advice. Done, then.”

  But that evening, as they sat around a fire with their hosts, Rhodry barely listened to the talk and the music round him. As much as he hated to leave the Westlands, he felt Deverry pulling at him, the memories of his native land rising in his mind as easily and as vividly as his native language had come back. All at once he realized that he was thinking of his ride east as “going home.” He looked up and found Calonderiel watching him in some concern.

  “You look like a man with a bad case of boils,” the banadar remarked. “Or are you brooding about that female?”

  “Neither. I’ve made up my mind. It’s east that I’ll be heading.”

  Calonderiel sighed in a long puff of breath.

  “I’ll hate to see you go, but it’s probably for the best. I suppose you’ll be safe there. At least the spirit won’t trouble you, but what about the Round-ears?”

  “If I stay out of Eldidd, no one’s going to recognize me.”

  “Even if they did, they’d never believe you were Rhodry Maelwaedd anyway. How strange, they’d say, that silver dagger looks a fair bit like the old gwerbret, the one who drowned so mysterious like all those years ago.”

  Rhodry smiled, but there was no humor in it.

  “No doubt. Will you ride with me to the border?”

  “Of course. It’s too cursed dangerous to let you go alone. Humph. I’ve got some Deverry coin with me. The handful I got from those merchants a couple of months ago, remember? You’re taking it with you.”

  “Now here, I don’t want—”

  “Hold your tongue! It won’t do me a cursed bit of good, and it’ll keep you warm this winter. You have the worst ill luck of any man I’ve ever known.” Calonderiel sounded personally aggrieved. “Why couldn’t this stupid bitch of a spirit at least wait until spring?”

  Rhodry started laughing. It came boiling out of his very heart, shaking him, choking him, but still he laughed on and on, until Calonderiel grabbed him by the shoulders and made him stop.

  In the days that followed, as he rode back east to the lands of men with Calonderiel and their escort, he found himself thinking of Aderyn, remembering all the times they’d spent together, all the favors that the old man had done him, though “favors” was much too mild a word. Ye gods, he would think, what’s going to happen to the kingdoms now? First Nevyn gone in Deverry, and now Aderyn dead in the Westlands! Although he knew that there were other dweomerworkers in both lands to protect their peoples, still it troubled his heart, this feeling that some great and dreadful thing was coming toward them all on a dark wind. The two deaths—Oldana so young, so unjustly taken; Aderyn no surprise, truly, at his advanced age—mingled together in his mind and tipped some inner balance dangerously low.

  They rode into Deverry up Pyrdon way, crossing the border on a day still and cold under a lowering sky. The horses were restless, feeling thunder coming, dancing and snorting as their hooves hit the unfamiliar surface of a log-paved road. By a stone pillar carved with the rearing stallion of the gwerbrets of Pyrdon, Calonderiel called a halt.

  “There’s no use you coming farther in,” Rhodry said.

  “True spoken. Bitter partings are best over fast.”

  Yet they lingered, sitting on horseback together and idly looking at the pillar. Since Rhodry could read, he translated the inscription into Elvish: a claim-stone, mostly, for the gwerbrets, though it did deign to tell them that Drw Loc, chief city of the rhan, lay some forty miles on.

  “Two days riding,” Calonderiel said. “Will you be safe tonight?”

  “There’s a town just ten miles down the road, or there was, anyway, last time I rode this way. I’ll find lodging there. And if the man named Evandar was telling me the truth, I’ll be safe enough with human beings around me.”

  “If.”

  The other men exchanged grim glances. The silence hung like the heavy air.

  “Do you see that device? the Stallion?” Rhodry found himself talking merely to be talking. “Another branch of this clan holds Cwm Peel under its sign. My cousin Blaen used to rule there, but he rode to the Otherlands many a long year ago. Huh. He named his eldest son after me. Maybe I should ride east and see if young Rhodry’s still upon the earth—listen to me! He’s not young anymore, is he? If naught else, I can pour a little milk and honey on Blaen’s grave.”

  “Ye gods, you’re in a morbid mood!”

  “Well, so I am. It aches my heart to leave you, my friend.”

  “And it aches mine to lose you. Whether you come back or no, Rhodry, you’ll always be my friend.”

  Rhodry felt a lump forming in his throat and looked away fast.

  “Tell my father where I’ve gotten myself to, won’t you?”

  “I will. Ye gods, I don’t relish the task, I tell you. No doubt he’ll revile me for days for letting you go off like this. Devaberiel’s the only man I know with a worse temper than mine.”

  They both smiled, briefly, and sat for another long moment more, studying the horizon where it darkened with storm.

  “Ah, well,” Calonderiel said at last. “For the love of every god, take care of yourself on the long road.”

  The silence grew. With a wave of his arm, Calonderiel called out to his men.

  “Let’s ride! No need to twist the arrow in the wound.”

  Rhodry steadied his horse and kept him still while they gathered in the road and clopped off. He sat, staring out across the empty meadowlands, until he could no longer hear them riding away. He was a silver dagger again, back on the long road, with no more of a name than Rhodry, not Maelwaedd, not ap Devaberiel—no name, no place, no clan to take him in. He started to laugh, his mad berserker’s chortle and howl, and headed off toward the east. It was a long time before he could make himself stop laughing.

  Late in the afternoon, when thunderheads were piling and sailing in a crisp sky, Rhodry rode into a village called Tiry, a scatter of some two dozen roundhouses, all nicely whitewashed and newly thatched for the winter and set among now-leafless ash and poplar trees. Down by the banks of a small river stood the local inn and tavern behind a wooden fence. When Rhodry led his horse into the yard, the tavernman bustled out to greet him, a stout fellow with hair as yellow and as messy as the thatch.

  “You’ll be wanting lodging, no doubt,” he announced. “And the gods all know that I wouldn’t turn anyone away tonight, not even a silver dagger like you.”

  “My thanks, I suppose. Tonight? What—”

  “Ye gods, man! It’s Samaen! Now let’s get that horse into the stables.”

  Rhodry was shocked at how easily he’d lost track of the markings of Time in the world of men. How could he have forgotten Samaen, when the gates of the Otherlands open wide and the unquiet dead come walking through the lands of their kin? Those who lie unburied, those who hold grudges, those who’ve left a true love behind or a hoard buried—they all come wandering the roads in the company of fiends and spirits on this night th
at belongs neither to this world nor to the other and thus lies common to both.

  Once his horse was fed and stabled, and his gear stowed in a neat pile under a table by the hearth, Rhodry and the innkeep, Merro, sat down to have a tankard of dark apiece in the otherwise empty tavern room.

  “You’re on the road late, silver dagger.”

  “I am, at that, and a cursed ugly thing it is, too. I couldn’t find a hire for the winter, you see.”

  “Ah, well.” The tavernman considered, sucking his teeth. “Well, now, there were some merchants through here not so long ago, from Dun Trebyc way, they were, and they told me about a feud brewing, down in the southern hills.”

  “Sounds like work for a silver dagger’s sword.”

  “It does, truly. What you do, see, is ride dead east from here till you reach the lake, then take the south-running road. Keep asking along the way. If there’s war brewing, it won’t be any secret, will it now? Or if that comes to naught, you might give his grace our gwerbret a try. He’s a generous man, just like he should be, and he remembers the old days, too, when you lads put a king on his throne, or so he always says. We remember the old days, here in Pyrdon.” Merro paused for a sip of ale. “This village, now? It used to be royal land, you see, when there was a king in Dun Drw instead of a gwerbret. That’s why it’s got this name. Ty Ric, it was once, the king’s house. There was a royal hunting lodge here in those days, you see, right where this inn is now, though of course there’s not one stick of wood left from it. That’s the way things go, eh?”

  “Interesting,” Rhodry said to be polite. “But it’s a free village now?”

  “It is, and on good terms at that, when it comes to the taxes. Lord Varyn, he’s our local lord, you see, is an honorable man, but even if he weren’t, well, we remember the days when this was the king’s land, not his, and we hold to our charter, like, and so does the gwerbret, and that’s that.” Merro raised his tankard in brief salute, had a sip, and proceeded to lecture Rhodry about local politics in great detail.

  When the sun sank so low that the storm clouds blazed red and gold, Merro closed the inn. Rhodry went along with him and his family to join the village in lighting the Bel fire. At the crest of a low hill near town two priests waited, dressed in white tunics, gold torcs round their necks, golden sickles dangling from their belts, with the village blacksmith and his son to help them. One at a time each village or farm family panted up the hill with a burden of wood, added it to the stack, and received the blessings of Great Bel. When everyone who lived under the temple’s jurisdiction was assembled and blessed, the priests laid the wood ready for a proper fire and sprinkled it with oil. As if in answer to their chanting, the twilight grew as gray and thick as fur. The blacksmith lit torches and stood prepared.